I walk on a thin layer of fresh snow through Tokyo's Uedo Park. I have a
meeting of sorts with a man I greatly admire. Many years before while
studying at the School for Oriental and African studies, I heard of this
man - a Hungarian who walked from Europe to India in search of his ancestors.
Individuals who set off on cross-continental sojourns to check out their
ancestral roots - these are the kind of folk I like to meet in my own travels.
Indeed this Hungarian, who happened to become the first translator of
Tibetan Buddhism to the West, would be one such character I would like to
meet. Not because of the superior intellect he exhibited, although I deeply
admire his ability to master in the course of his life not only Tibetan but
seventeen other languages. Rather, I am drawn to this bold Hungarian's sense
of solitude, and the purity with which he travelled. He was a traveller in
the truest sense - one who leaves home with no thought of returning.
Travelling with no need ever to return brings a kind of inner strength. This
strength comes from knowing one is ultimately completely alone in the world
in which one travels. And for these travellers the movement of travel itself
brings with it the deepest solitude - a solitude that does not mean having to
be alone. This Hungarian, who left his Transylvanian home and never
returned, dying in Darjeeling, never came to Japan. But this winter day I
find myself searching for him in Tokyo...

Back in February 1819, it appeared as if Alexander Csoma de Kõrösi was going
for a chilly mid-morning stroll along the riverbanks of his Hungarian
village. A bit of dark rye bread and cheese in the leather satchel and
walking staff in hand, Csoma de Kõrösi certainly did not appear to be
setting off from his homeland in search of the origins of the Hungarian
race. Certainly if one wants to learn about one's heritage, one may venture
to the local university library for the afternoon, or perhaps just to the
local café to ask a few old timers about grandpa's grandpa - but, such a
local, perusal approach was the antithesis of that taken by Csoma de Kõrösi.
He felt no boundaries when travelling and left no query unanswered in his
research.

We have to admire Csoma de Kõrösi's ambition. At the time of his departure
in February 1819, his only geographical reference for the goal of setting
foot in his ancestral homeland was a chance classroom remark he had heard in
his Gottingen University years before. Theologian and orientalist J.G.
Eichhorn had mentioned in a lecture how "certain Arabic manuscripts which
must contain very important information regarding the history of the Middle
Ages and of the origins of the Hungarian nation are still in Asia." Vague as
it sounds, this was all the encouragement Csoma de Kõrösi needed to begin
studying Arabic and tracking down maps in the dusty cartography department.

Later, during his studies of Arabic in Germany, Csoma de Kõrösi came across
a work by the 7th century Greek historian Theophylact Simocatta that claimed
the Turks defeated in 597 a people known as the Ugars. Because of the
linguistic similarity of the word Ugars to Ugor, Ungri, Hungar and Hongrois,
it was thought by Csoma de Kõrösi and others that the Ugars could be a
long-forgotten tribe who were likely ancestors of the present day
Hungarians. Some histories Csoma de Kõrösi studied also tied the
Huns and a people in Central Asia known variously as Ouars, Oigurs, or
Yugras. These were the putative theories which led Csoma de Kõrösi to
believe that his Hungarian ancestors were to be found in the Tarim Basin in
Central Asian, very likely among the present day Uigyurs in East Turkistan
(Chinese: Xingjian).

So it was that on 20 February 1819 Csoma de Kõrösi set out on foot to China
via Moscow, intending to enter East Turkistan from the north. Count Teleky
met Csoma de Kõrösi on the road that morning and asked him where he was
going. Pausing briefly, a truly beatific Csoma de Kõrösi replied
unambiguously, "I am going to Asia in search of our relatives."

The first I heard of Alexander Csoma de Kõrösi was from Professor
Piatagorski, an eccentric Russian lecturer of Indian Philosophy at the
School of Oriental and African Studies in London. I suppose Professor
Piatagorski was fond of Csoma de Kõrösi because of their comparable mad
brilliance, and similarities in their respective efforts involving
painstakingly exhaustive research.

Dr. Piatagorski mentioned that Csoma de Kõrösi, in his life-long search for
the origins of the Hungarian race, was the godfather to all current day
translators of Tibet's tantric literature. And, it was through Csoma de Kõrösi
writings on the Kalachakra tantra that the West first learned of the
mythical land of Shambhala. But in fact, translating tantric Tibetan texts
was only a side project, a support, for the Hungarian who never wavered from
the goal of finding the origins of his ancestors.

The final word I remember from Dr. Piatagorski on Csoma de Kõrösi hinted at
a unique statue of the Hungarian in meditation posture somewhere in Japan.
Dr. Piatagorski said the statue was called 'Csoma in the aspect of a
Bodhisattva', and chuckled, it was "as if the Hungarian chap was immersed in
the contemplation of the vast cosmology of the Kalachakra, or tired there
from..."

Csoma de Kõrösi's travel plans changed as soon as he left Hungary. He never
made it to Russia, nor to China. Instead, after a previous trip to Croatia to study
Slavic and perfect his Turkish (adding to his linguistic rucksack which
already included Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French, English and
Romanian), he moved onto Constantinople from where he hoped to head north to
Moscow. Because of an outbreak of the plague, he turned south instead by
ship to Alexandria, Egypt and then to Syria. Desert trekking to Mosul, he caught a boat
down the Tigris to Baghdad where he continued alongside camels in a caravan
to Tehran. In a letter from Tehran, Csoma de Kõrösi prophetically described
his life's journey, "Both to satisfy my desire, and to prove my gratitude
and love for my nation, I have set off, and must search for the origin of my
nation according to the lights which I have kindled in Germany, avoiding
neither dangers that may perhaps occur, nor the distance I may have to
travel."

During the next three years of solo travel for this European Christian along
the Silk Road - from the middle east to Bukhara, past the Bamian Buddhas and
Kabul, and into Pakistan and Lahore - Csoma de Kõrösi changed his appearance
and dress, spoken tongue, name and identification papers to suit, and
indeed, survive the notoriously dangerous roads.

Having passed through Srinagar and Amritsar in 1823, Csoma de Kõrösi walked
into the walled fortresses of Leh, the capital of Ladakh. Learning that his
only option north to East Turkistan would be to go where no other westerner
had ever been before - that is, trek over the 18,000-foot mountain passes of
the Karakorum and Kun Lun mountain ranges. Csoma de Kõrösi decided to turn
back to Srinagar. It was a choice that led Csoma de Kõrösi not to East
Turkistan, the assumed home of the Hungarians, but rather to an encounter
with the seminal Great Gamer, William Moorcroft.

Moorcroft, a horse-breeder turned voyager turned spy, immediately took to
Csoma de Kõrösi and he knew that British intelligence agents in Simla would
have plenty of work for a linguist of Csoma de Kõrösi's calibre - especially
given the need to translate confiscated correspondence from Russian and
other languages in which the Hungarian could work. The only existing
European dictionary of Tibetan at that time was the *Alphabetum Tibetanum*,
published in Rome in 1762 after the work of A. A. Geeorgi, a Capuchin friar.
With the Great Game in full swing, and the British at a loss for Tibetan
speakers, Moorcroft and the East India Company offered to pay Csoma de Kõrösi
to prepare a Tibetan dictionary.

Moorcroft was part of a handful of British imperialists connected to the
East India Trading Company who can in large part be credited with the
recovery of India's architectural history of Buddhism. They were mostly
young men who excelled in linguistics, archaeology, and downing stiff
scotch - they were not the type of colonialists who sat around in their Raj
tea gardens, they preferred traipsing through the jungle.

Three months ago, I found myself at Amaravati, one such historically
significant Buddhist site 're-discovered' in Andhra Pradesh by Colonel Colin
Mackenzie in 1797. I had joined over 200,000 other pilgrims for the
Kalachakra initiation by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Significantly,
Amaravati's great stupa of Dhanyakataka is said by most sources to be the
first place the Buddha taught the Kalachakra tantra. Csoma de Kõrösi noted
in his textual research that a highly accomplished 99-year old tantrika by
the name of Suchindra travelled from Shambhala to Amaravati where he was
taught the Kalachakra by the Buddha - about 2,530 years ago. Thereafter,
Suchindra returned to Shambhala, celebrated by his pious devotees as a great
Dharma King, and passed on the holy teachings. So began the unbroken lineage
of Dharma Kings who are still enthroned in Shambhala today.

Translating the deeds of benevolent Shambhalic kings ruling over esoteric
lands of realized meditators and multi-faced deities was still only a
secondary task - Csoma de Kõrösi was after hard logistics to plot the map to
his homeland. Thus he continued the ardent task of cracking more codes to
unlock the door to the origins of the Hungarians. And so, Csoma de Kõrösi
spent the next eleven years engaged in Tibetan studies, living the life of a
hermit with ascetic-like discipline. His efforts led to the publishing in
the mid 1830s of his Tibetan dictionary, a grammar, and short accounts of
Tibetan literature and history. In particular, using the ancient woodblock
at Zangla monastery in Ladakh, Csoma de Kõrösi outlined the basic themes of
the Kalachakra tantra and the Kingdom of Shambhala. His research on the
Kalachakra represented the totality of westerners' knowledge of the subject
for nearly a century.

One night whilst studying in his room in Ladakh, Csoma de Kõrösi discovered
a passage in a commentary on the Kalachakra tantra that he believed not only
pinpointed his ancestral homeland, but also identified it as none other than
Shambhala, which he portrays as 'the Buddhist Jerusalem'. Csoma de Kõrösi
wrote, "the mentioning of a great desert of twenties days' journey, and of
white sandy plains on both sides of the Sita, render it probable that the
Buddhist Jerusalem (I so call it), in the most ancient times, must have been
beyond the Jaxartes [in current day Uzbekistan], and probably the land of
the Yugurs." Csoma de Kõrösi believed that the Kalachakra tantra was his
esoteric passport to his native soil in East Turkistan. Csoma de Kõrösi was
not of the view that the Shambhala he was studying was a description of an
imaginary landscape, a contemplative playground, or some sort of passageway
to a Buddhist metaphor - he believed literally that these tantric scriptures
gave the latitude and longitude markings for Shambhala, which was none other
than the land of the Yugurs, or Uigyurs, from which flowed his ancestral
lineage.

Upon completion in 1837 of the dictionary and grammar, Csoma de Kõrösi
decided to remain in India to continue his study of Sanskrit and related
dialects, still preparing himself linguistically for his journey via Lhasa
to his believed homeland to the north. Csoma de Kõrösi felt further study of
Sanskrit was the key needed to open the meaning of many of the scriptures
found in the great monastic libraries in Lhasa - which would provide further
clues to the ancient Uigyur Kingdom. By this time, Csoma de Kõrösi had
mastered eighteen languages, and while Tibetan was in his repertoire, he
still had not set foot in Tibet proper - although Ladakh is often included
geo-culturally as Western Tibet.

In late March 1842, Csoma de Kõrösi made his way from Calcutta, still on
foot, through the Terai jungle to the hill stations in Darjeeling. He
immediately forged relationships with Dr. Archibald Campbell, a British
agent based in Darjeeling. The diplomat set up the diplomatic necessities
enabling Csoma de Kõrösi to travel through Tibet. But his journey through
the jungle had taken its toll and by the first week of April, Csoma de Kõrösi
was running a high marsh fever, likely malaria. Dr. Campbell wrote of Csoma
de Kõrösi, "...all his hopes of attaining the object of the long and laborious
search were centred in the discovery of the country of the 'Yoogors'...to
reach it was the goal of this most ardent wishes, and there he fully
expected to find the tribes he had hitherto sought in vain."

On 11 April 1842, Csoma de Kõrösi died peacefully. Campbell noted that the
Hungarian's only possessions were, "four boxes of books and paper, the suit
of blue clothes he always wore, and in which he died, a few sheets, and one
cooking pot."

Csoma de Kõrösi's journey wanders through my mind as I stare at him wrapped
in his meditation shawl, hands resting in his lap. This twenty centimetre
bronze statue, with his sorrowful downcast eyes, speaks volumes - of a quest
for knowledge, of journeys into the unknown, and of the stark reality that
death may come at any moment. It is indeed admirable
to bear witness to such a devoted quest of this solitary traveller - and it
would seem that Csoma de Kõrösi quest for *his* Shambhala was a life well
spent.

19 February 2006 Tokyo, Japan*

Matteo Pistono

The Japanese named the 20 centimetre bronze statue simply,
"Choma in the aspect of Bodhisattva", after it was gifted to the then
Imperial Museum in 1931 by Hungarian journalist, Dr. Felix Vályi.